Are you missing this important link ?? in your leadership?

Leaders need to be led:

• 40% will leave their job within one year due to lack of development and training
• 94% won’t quit if they’re offered opportunities to be developed
• When leaders receive leadership training, their performance increases by 20%

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The Missing Link in Leadership

We have a leadership crisis on our hands, where a whole generation of Baby Boomer leaders are retiring without people to pass the reigns off to.

It’s not that people are not there to step in. It’s that those who are there are underdeveloped and under-mentored (especially in the wake of a global pandemic, where development efforts went on the back burner as companies tried to stay alive).

While we love the radical ownership mindset of “if it’s to be, it’s up to me,” where people use mettle and grit to rise to all leadership challenges, this can only be part of the story.

Too often we enact the Peter Principle, where we keep handing out promotions to those who keep swimming in our sink-or-swim world—right up to the point where they start drowning in a role, and then they’re allowed to languish there. They’re promoted to their point of incompetence, without anyone to help fill in their inevitable gaps.

What I advocate is a Culture of Apprenticeship, where all team members at all levels are apprenticed through transitions.

I call this the Apprenticeship Square.

Here’s how I describe it in my book ‘The Cave, The Road, The Table, and The Fire’:

I do, you watch:

Your team, at this stage, is unconsciously incompetent. But you’re not! They need to hear you work out what you do and how you do it. Pull them in close, invite them into conversations they should observe, have them eat lunch with you while you think through an issue at hand out loud. Generously give room for their curious questions.

I do, you help:

Your team is now consciously incompetent – they know they don’t know much (and it’s freaking them out). But you do! Give them a little room to get their hands dirty alongside you. Open your schedule to them. You don’t need to add a huge number of extra meetings, just cheat a little. If I’m travelling, I may as well travel with someone and give them a role. As I prepare a keynote, I might as well ask for help with a portion.

You do, I help:

They are now in the driver’s seat, although you can get a hand on the wheel, if necessary. This process, if practised properly, is going to irritate you. It slows you down. You’ll want to just do it yourself. But younger leaders will need to fail and make a mess on your watch. You’ll have some messes to clear up. But that’s what it takes to lead with soul.

You do, I watch:

This is when the leader becomes a fan. Your team’s experience is becoming unconscious competence. You may have no functional leadership role, but you’re leading from a distance, there to advise when asked. You must get out of the way. You must learn to be absent well.

Are you actively apprenticing others?

Are you actively asking others to mentor you?

Read more about Apprenticeship on our latest blog.

IN A SENSE

From Team Arable: A curated list of things our senses have encountered that are worth passing on.

• ?? Great tips on How to Mentor More People—and Not Get Burned Out from HBR
• ?? Move over Wordle: NYT has a new addictive and highly satisfying daily word game, Strands, a themed word search
• ?? Nothing like an instant candid, analog-style: Polaroid-style photos are back thanks to an array of solid Instax Cameras, like this Fujifilm Mini EVO